


a sister no more

by lebensmuede



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Coping, Death, Grieving, Hurt, petunia grieves lily's death, sister death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-02
Updated: 2020-05-02
Packaged: 2021-03-02 03:21:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,726
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23958349
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lebensmuede/pseuds/lebensmuede
Summary: "You didn't just lose a mother that night in Godric's Hollow, you know. I lost a sister."
Kudos: 6





	a sister no more

Petunia Dursley hadn't spoken to her sister in months, years even. She had no idea what was going on in Lily's life or what she was doing. Petunia didn't even know if her sister was still alive, although she assumed that Lily was. It never occurred to her that Lily would ever be dead. She was far too young and healthy for such a thing to ever concern Petunia.

Until the morning she woke up and found a baby on her doorstep.

The moment Petunia read the letter that was left with the child, it was as if the world had gone silent around her. The only thing she could hear was white noise.

She was in the kitchen, the baby, Harry was his name, asleep somewhere in the house although she wasn't sure who had him or where he was being put. Her face paper white, eyes staring down at the paper in her hands, uncomprehending, as time seemed to slow down around her.

Her sister was _dead_.

_Dead_.

Murdered in the middle of the night along with her husband. Her beautiful, vivacious, magical sister, whom she had always been jealous of but secretly aspired to be, was gone. Taken from this world in a split second by a monster.

Her sister, who she had thought would have years ahead of her, gone. Just like that.

It sounded almost fake, like something she would imagine in a nightmare. It could not possibly be real life. Her sister couldn't be _dead._ She was only twenty-one, for crying out loud. It just didn't make any sense. Who would want to kill her sister? Everyone loved Lily, Petunia had met no one who could resist Lily's charm.

"Well, I must say, I think good riddance to the both of them," Vernon's booming voice split through the silence in the house. Petunia couldn't help but flinch at the sound. Petunia stared at her husband blankly for a moment, before pulling herself together and putting on an expression of disinterest as was expected of her, despite the burning rage the words caused.

"Who knows what those kinds of folk are involved in, I mean, really, _murdered_ in their own homes. This isn't some melodrama on the telly. If you want to know what I think," Petunia could not think of anything less she wanted to know at the moment, "they probably had it coming," Vernon continued on, oblivious to the stilted behaviour of his wife who looked at him unseeing.

_Had it coming. Good riddance._

The words were ringing in Petunia's head as she followed the movement of Vernon's sizable frame around their kitchen as he prepared coffee. She was overwhelmed with the sudden urge to wrap her hands around his throat.

Her sister was dead, and he stood in her kitchen disparaging her. Petunia had her own gripes with Lily, almost all of them stemming from her own insecurity, but Lily was her _sister._ Vernon was in absolutely no shape or form to be speaking about her sister in this way, her _dead sister_.

All the years he had spent slandering Lily to her face, when his own, Marjorie, was nothing but an abominable hag was almost too much to bear now. Petunia had done nothing but grit her teeth and tolerate Marjorie's presence, and here stood her husband dragging her _dead sister_ through the mad.

Every time Vernon turned to look at her, she was quick to rearrange her face into an expression of disinterest, her thoughts racing a mile a minute. Between maintaining a facade around Vernon, her shock, her growing anger, and now the regret that she felt in her heart, Petunia didn't know what to do with herself.

She wanted to be alone. She wanted to process her emotions in the privacy of her own room, away from Vernon and any other prying eyes.

"Darling, I believe I'm coming down with some sort of cold, I'm going to be in our room, would you mind looking after Dudley for the day, I'll take care of the boy," Petunia said listlessly, and before Vernon could say anything else, she had drifted out of her kitchen, silent as a ghost, and gone up the stairs to her room.

Vernon had placed the sleeping Harry in their room where he continued to dose undisturbed.

It had become violently apparent that Petunia had known nothing about her sister. She thought she had some clue, after all Lily was constantly going on about how wonderful Hogwarts was and her friends, and even the occasional politics. But to find out that her darling sister had been hunted and killed by some sociopath was almost too much.

What had her sister been involved in, and why? What was Lily hiding from all of them, all of those years about her magical world?

Even in her numb state, Petunia had some idea of what it likely was. Lily, who was always defending the neighborhood kid who got picked on all the time. Lily, who had befriended Severus Snape and believed the best of him even when Petunia could see the cruelty in his eyes. Lily, who constantly had letters being sent home from Hogwarts for giving another student a thrashing if she found them bullying someone. Lily, who was probably trying to save the world.

And Petunia hadn't known about any of it because she'd constantly pushed Lily away and told her she didn't care (even though it was obvious to everyone how desperately she did).

And the realization that Petunia had done this to herself brought the first debilitating wave of grief. Year after year of sniping at Lily and making snide remarks because she was so _angry_ and _jealous_ that, once again, it was Lily who was the special one and not her. Going out of her way to put Lily down and make her miserable about her newfound life, the distance that had grown between them as a result. Making her feel that she was a freak for being different, constantly trying to humiliate her.

She couldn't breathe, the tears kept coming, her vision blurring, and all Petunia could manage was great heaving sobs. She tried to be quiet, there was a baby sleeping in the room.

Lily, who might have hidden things from their parents to avoid worrying them, hadn't even told Petunia because Petunia had made it so very clear that she wanted nothing to do with her sister, that she hated Lily until the very end.

In hindsight, she hadn't really known anything about Lily's life at school. She always seized speaking about it the minute Petunia walked into the room. And the few things she did know, were little snippets about her friends or her grades. Never anything about Lily struggling with the workload, never anything about Lily being bullied (if she was at all).

She wished she had not been so cruel. She wished that she had let go of the resentment in her and apologized to her sister. She wished that this had not been the way that she found out about Lily. She wished her sister had some sense of self-preservation instead of trying to save the world. She wished her husband wasn't so cold and unfeeling in a time like this.

Petunia wished for a great many things.

_Good riddance. Probably deserved it_.

They kept replaying over and over in her head. It sounded so cold and heartless, had she said something similar to Lily? It felt like the worst punishment in the world.

Eventually the heaving died down and Petunia sat staring at the walls, unseeing. She wasn't aware of the hours passing by. She didn't know what time of day it was. When Vernon opened the door, no doubt to ask her to cook lunch or dinner, she simply closed her eyes and pretended she was asleep. She guessed the exhaustion must've shown on her face because Vernon closed the door and left her alone.

At some point, she must've actually fallen asleep for when Petunia opened her eyes next, a bottle of warm milk had been set on the nightstand next to her, and Harry had awoken and was making tiny noises.

She picked up the bottle and moved towards him and when the baby looked up at her, Petunia almost started at the bright green eyes that looked exactly like Lily's. Harry stared up at her quietly for a moment before his face broke into a gummy smile and he giggled up at her. Petunia could not help but soften towards him and his innocence.

She fed him, changed his diaper and kept herself occupied by playing with him, always aware that if she let herself think for even a moment, she would lose it all over again.

Petunia passed her days by fussing over Harry and her son. It kept her distracted enough to keep the grief at bay. Vernon said nothing the first week after the boy had been dropped on their doorstep. He knew well enough not to broach the subject with Petunia, understood enough to keep quiet.

And Petunia found herself unable to look her husband in the eye. Every time she saw him, all she could hear and remember was the coldness with which he condemned her sister. She found that she could not control the rage it triggered inside of her or the total lack of emotion that she experienced instead at the site of the man, and so she spoke as little as possible without being rude.

And when Vernon said, "Reckon we should find somewhere to put the boy, can't have him staying with us in the house," newspaper in hand while she cooked breakfast in the kitchen, Petunia found herself putting her foot down in a way that she never had before in their marriage.

"No," she said stonily, her back to Vernon as she moved around the kitchen.

"But-but he can't _stay_ ," Vernon sputtered indignantly, turning purple in the face, newspaper forgotten.

"Vernon, my darling, the politics of the Wizarding World are the one area in which you know nothing about. You don't know what these people are capable of. You don't know the rules. You read the letter. The boy stays. That is the end of it," Petunia said and shut the cupboard door closed with finality.

**Author's Note:**

> i know petunia is like a terrible person in the series but i thought i would try and lend a bit of humanity to her. this idea came to me one night while i was trying to fall asleep so i thought i would go with it and see where it took me. i don't think i did justice to the grief that petunia was experiencing but i put in my best effort. if you read and enjoyed feel free to leave a comment i love to hear back from y'all


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